City Government

2 Columbus Circle And The Need To Preserve Preservation

On the brink of its fortieth birthday, the landmarks preservation law â€“
created two years after New Yorkers were shocked at the needless
demolition of the old Pennsylvania Station in 1963 â€“ has preserved more
than 1,100 individual landmarks and 22,000 properties in 81 historic
districts across New York City. Thanks to the law, and the efforts of
the city’s preservationists, New Yorkers and visitors to the city can enjoy brownstone-lined
streets of Brooklyn, garden communities of Jackson Heights and such
indestructible-seeming architectural monuments as Grand Central
Terminal, all of which might not otherwise exist.

Today, preservation is a proven
tool for stabilizing and revitalizing neighborhoods, maintaining a
record of New York’s architectural and cultural history, and creating a
tangible link between past and future generations.

But while 40 years of landmark preservation is indeed cause for
celebration, many preservationists are not in any mood to pop open the
champagne. Communities throughout the city are increasingly frustrated
by the agency created by the law, the Landmarks Preservation Commission,
which seems out of touch with our concerns.

Among the host of reasons for communities' concern is the commission’s failure to hold public
hearings on such buildings as 2 Columbus Circle and St. Thomas the
Apostle Church in Harlem, both imminently threatened with destruction or a destructive alteration. These two -- one a mid-century Modern icon by one of America’s most
progressive Modernist architects, Edward Durell Stone; the other a work
of both architectural and spiritual importance to the Harlem community
-- are what Penn Station was forty years ago: igniters. This time,
however, the city has a Landmarks Law. The question is, why isn’t it
being used?

One reason is money. At just over $3 million, the Landmarks Commission’s budget is the
smallest of any city agency, and it has fallen precipitously over the
past decade, with the staff being cut back significantly. Meanwhile, the commission’s workload has increased by
volumes. In any given year, it receives close to 8,000 applications
for alterations ranging from cornice replacements to entirely new
construction. And with each designation of an individual landmark or
district, the workload increases.

But, while money is tight, the city cannot afford in architectural
and cultural terms to force the agency to scale back its efforts. The
mission of the agency is to protect the city’s historical and
architectural heritage. Once this heritage is gone, it is gone
forever.

Another reason the landmarks law isn't being used is politics. The decreased funding for the Landmarks
Commission is not merely a symptom of across-the-board municipal
belt-tightening. It reflects the city’s priority list, with the
real-estate development lobby right at the top. The bias towards
large-scale development, which promises quick fixes to perceived urban
problems, versus preservation, which can be a slower, more organic
renewal process, has an impact not only on the budget but on the
political dynamics determining which buildings do â€“ and do not â€“ get
considered for landmark protection.

Although 2 Columbus Circle is by no means the only source of
preservationists’ concern (why else would dozens of groups in
communities as varied as St. George in Staten Island and the Upper
East Side of Manhattan have leapt to endorse the coalition's report?), it provides a useful case study.

The Case For 2 Columbus Circle

Robert A.M. Stern is one of the most vocal supporters of preserving 2
Columbus Circle. His credentials go beyond his role as foremost
chronicler of New York’s history (Stern is
the author of New York 1960, New York 1880, New York 1900, New York 1930, and a
forthcoming volume entitled New York 2000). He is one of the most
famous architects in the United States, the former director of Columbia
University’s acclaimed graduate program in historic preservation, and
the current Dean of the Yale School of Architecture. When considering
whether to designate a particular resource as an individual landmark or
as part of a historic district, the Landmarks Commission frequently
cites Stern’s opinions as proof of the resource’s significance. In
terms of New York City landmarks, he is clearly an authority.

The campaign to save 2 Columbus Circle began in earnest in 1996, soon
after the building turned thirty years old and became eligible for
landmark designation, when Stern drew up a list of “35 Modern
Landmarks-in-Waiting” that was published in the New York Times. Two
Columbus Circle, the former Gallery of Modern Art built in 1964 to house
Huntington Hartford’s art collection, was included along with the
Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza and Lincoln Center for the
Performing Arts.

Holding a public hearing to consider 2 Columbus Circle’s merits for
landmark designation should have been a no-brainer for the commission.
Yet, while the commission has moved to designate a few of Stern’s 35, it
has determinedly ignored him on 2 Columbus Circle. It has also ignored
the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Preservation League
of New York State, both of which included 2 Columbus Circle on their
latest “Most Endangered” lists. It has ignored New York Times
architecture critics Herbert Muschamp (“The refusal of the New York City
Landmarks Commission to hold hearings on the future of 2 Columbus Circle
is a shocking dereliction of public duty”) and Nicolai Ouroussoff
(“Stone’s design, and the people of this city, deserve more respect than
this”). The commission appears unmoved by the signatures collected
from over 1,000 individuals and every single major preservation
organization in the city, including the Municipal Art Society, the
Historic Districts Council, and the New York Landmarks Conservancy,
calling for a hearing â€“ not official designation, just a hearing.

These advocates are the Silenced
Majority, ignored while the new Museum of Arts and Design plans a renovation of the now-vacant 2 Columbus Circle that would destroy many of its distinctive features. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has described those features in this "unorthodox" building as "a marble skin, porthole windows and a street-level arcade that critics have likened to a row of lollipops." But even some critics of the building question the Landmarks Preservation Commission's refusal to give it a hearing.

Recognizing the commission’s delinquency on 2 Columbus Circle as part
of a larger pattern of negligence, Stern recently issued a statement
urging the City Council to exercise its oversight power, “a move
necessitated by the continued failure of the city agency to fulfill its
important duties.” He went on, “while reasonable people can disagree
over the merits of designation, the reluctance of the Commission to
simply hold hearings in the face of sustained, vocal, widespread, and
indeed unprecedented demand, including the recommendations of two former
Chairs of the Commission, is, frankly, inexplicable.”

The former chairs to whom Stern refers are Beverly Moss Spatt, a
planner who served from 1974 to 1978, and Gene A. Norman, an architect who
served from 1983 to 1989. Both have written to the commission to call for a
hearing for 2 Columbus Circle, as has Anthony M. Tung, a preservation
scholar and former Landmarks Commissioner. Tung wrote, “Simply, in the
26 years of my involvement in preservation matters, beginning with my
appointment as a commissioner by Mayor Edward I. Koch in 1979, I have
never seen the commission turn its back on such a widely supported and
substantive argument for a hearingâ€¦Have all of these people suddenly
grown ignorant? Entered senility? Gone blind? Or is the commission
being arbitrary and capricious?”

Arbitrary and capricious behavior by city agencies is grounds for
legal action. The report points out that, early in its history, the
Landmarks Commission was peppered with lawsuits brought by property
owners and developers seeking to overturn the Landmarks Law. Today, a
number of lawsuits have been brought by owners and community groups who
believe that the commission should have applied higher standards to
protect the city’s historic resources. Somewhere along the line, the
Landmarks Commission was cast (by its leadership and real estate-lobbied
mayoral administrations) in the role of back-room negotiator,
transforming what was once a participatory decision-making process into
a bureaucratic maze that thwarts meaningful public dialogue. The
agency’s ability to determine the future of over 23,000
historic properties throughout the five boroughs has been seriously
undermined.

The problems experienced by communities seeking to work with the
Landmarks Commission reflect both an economic and a cultural shift in
the agency’s operations. To try to debate which shift caused which is
fruitless. The point is that the commission’s lack of transparency and
responsiveness stymies community-based preservation efforts and leads
directly to the loss of irreplaceable historic fabric. This loss and the
growing chasm between the commission and its natural allies â€“ the
citizen-stewards of the historic city â€“ must not become the legacy of
our generation.

Kate Wood is executive director of Landmark West!, a community group currently leading the
effort to preserve 2 Columbus Circle.

Editor's Choice

The comments section is provided as a free service to our readers. Gotham Gazette's editors reserve the right to delete any comments. Some reasons why comments might get deleted: inappropriate or offensive content, off-topic remarks or spam.

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Gotham Gazette is published by Citizens Union Foundation and is made possible by support from the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Altman Foundation,the Fund for the City of New York and donors to Citizens Union Foundation. Please consider supporting Citizens Union Foundation's public education programs. Critical early support to Gotham Gazette was provided by the Charles H. Revson Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.